Author: Eli

Eli Pousson started as a Field Officer at Baltimore Heritage in partnership with the National Trust for Historic Preservation in October 2009. Prior to moving to Baltimore, Eli worked for the DC Office of Historic Preservation and completed graduate work in anthropology and historic preservation at the University of Maryland College Park. Eli continues to work with the Lakeland Community Heritage Project and other heritage organizations in Prince George’s County, Maryland.

Baltimore Building of the Week: Greek Revival Rowhouses

This week in the Baltimore Building of the Week series from Dr. John Breihan features the Irish Shrine and Railroad Workers Museum on Lemmon Street and the Babe Ruth Birthplace on Emory Street.

Lemmon Street, courtesy Jack Breihan

The popularity of the Greek Revival in Baltimore was not limited to churches and schools; it also produced a new design for the city’s ubiquitous rowhouses. Greek Revival rowhouses dispensed with the dormer window of the older federal style. Instead, the top half-story was lit by a square “attic” window beneath a less steeply gabled roof. From grand examples in Mount Vernon to humble 2 ½ story houses in Fells Point and Federal Hill, Greek Revival rowhouses dominated from 1830 or so until 1860. Two examples saved from demolition and open to view are the Irish Shrine and Railroad Workers Museum on Lemmon Street and the Babe Ruth Birthplace on Emory Street.

Babe Ruth Birthplace, courtesy Jack Breihan

Baltimore Building of the Week: Gothic Revival Churches

This week’s Baltimore Building of the Week from Dr. John Breihan are two Gothic Revival churches from architect Robert Cary Long, Jr.– the St. Alphonsus Catholic Church and New Unity Church Ministries, historically known as as the Franklin Street Presbyterian Church.

St.Alphonsus/Image courtesy Jack Breihan

At the same time as he was designing Greek Revival temples for immigrant Catholic and Jewish worshipers, the eclectic architect Robert Cary Long, Jr., also worked in the Gothic Revival. At St. Alphonsus Catholic Church (1845) and the Franklin Street Presbyterian Church (1847 – now New Unity Church Ministries), Long’s Gothic designs were more assured than Godefroy’s seminary chapel four decades earlier. St. Alphonsus, intended for Baltimore’s German Catholics, was based on medieval German hall churches; Franklin Street Presbyterian on Tudor-era architecture in England. In both cases, the church walls were originally coated in gray stucco intended to look like stone. Removing the stucco reveals pleasing pastel bricks, but also exposes them to deterioration that may threaten the long-term integrity of these fine churches.

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Baltimore Building of the Week: St. Peter the Apostle Church

This week’s Baltimore Building of the Week arrives one day late, but with two buildings from Dr. John Breihan instead of one. The first of these two Greek Revival churches is St. Peter the Apostle Church built in 1843 at South Poppleton and Hollins Streets.

Image courtesy Jack Breihan

Nothing shows 19th-century Baltimore’s eclectic taste in architectural styles better than the churches erected by the city’s Roman Catholics. Their Cathedral (now the Basilica) was neoclassical, as were the first two parish churches, St. Patrick (demolished in 1897) and St. Vincent de Paul. St. Mary’s Seminary chapel was gothic. Here at St. Peter the Apostle, completed in 1842, the style is Greek revival. The first Catholic parish on the West Side, St. Peter’s was meant to serve immigrant Irish workers at the nearby B & O Railroad shops. Perhaps as a nod to “Jacksonian democracy,” the church is a brick version of an austere Athenian temple, with six white wooden Doric columns supporting a large pediment. The designer was the fashionable local architect Robert Cary Long, Jr. Three years after completing St. Peter’s, Long used the same Greek style on the East Side of town for another immigrant congregation, the Lloyd Street Synagogue. While the synagogue has been preserved as part of the Jewish Museum of Maryland, St. Peter’s is threatened by the lack of ongoing activity. The Transfiguration Community, combining three West Side parishes, recently consolidated worship in just one church, St. Jerome’s.

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Baltimore Building of the Week: McKim’s Free School

This week’s Baltimore Building of the Week from Dr. John Breihan is McKim’s Free School at 1120 East Baltimore Street,

Image courtesy Jack Breihan

“Democracy” became a byword for American society in the late 1820s, as property requirements for white, male voters were repealed, and the decidedly un-aristocratic Andrew Jackson was elected President. In architecture, this meant returning to the styles of ancient democracy in Athens. A remarkably fine example of this Greek revival is the McKim Free School on East Baltimore Street. John McKim, a wealthy merchant and a member of the nearby Old Town Friends Meeting, instructed his two sons to establish a school for poor children. The building they erected in 1835 was clearly intended as a monument of democracy. The small school, only 40 by 60 feet, boasted an elaborate (and expensive) stone portico and pediment in the Greek Doric order. Today, a nonprofit foundation preserves both McKim’s concern for disadvantaged youth and his sons’ classical monument.

Baltimore Building of the Week: Peale Museum

This week’s Baltimore Building of the Week is the first building in the Western Hemisphere designed and built as a museum, the Peale Museum.

Image courtesy Jack Breihan

Another industry to make an early start in Baltimore was the museum. In 1801, the artistic Peale family (father Charles, sons Rembrandt, Raphaelle, Reubens, and Titian) opened the first American museum in borrowed or rented quarters in Philadelphia. In 1814, Rembrandt Peale commissioned this federal-style museum in Baltimore – the first purpose-built public museum in the Western hemisphere. On display were scientific exhibits like the excavated skeleton of a prehistoric mastodon as well as paintings and curiosities. In 1830, the museum closed, and the building began 45 years service as Baltimore’s City Hall. Later it served as Colored Elementary School No. 1. After restoration in 1928 it once again became a museum, this time of Baltimore municipal history. In 1976 the Peale became part of the underfunded Baltimore City Life Museums, the financial collapse of which was the greatest disaster for the city’s history since the Great Fire. Largely vacant since City Life folded in 1997, the city-owned Peale Museum is the locus of a proposal to open a center for local history organizations.